a thousand
shimmering lights
in praise
of no particular 
occasion
can we be
that bold?

Pigment fading, your shoulders curl
in before you shrivel up and detach
from your stem. I used to find this
unacceptable, resisting the inevitability
of my own skin turning sallow,
shoulders pinned against time.
Blossoms drooping, the sagging of skin -
if we are to be compost
for the next generation
let us not depend on form,
but feeling to seed the next
​embodiment of love.

Image by David Aler

She was a lover of the blank page. In 7th grade Mrs. B unlocked the door
to her swooning heart with a story of apartheid, and her first poem marched
forth in a brave cry for beloved justice and care. Sometimes words would trip
over each other pouring out of a thought cloud pregnant with emotion.
At other times, the landscape of poetic prose was dry, an arid dessert
where every last drop of creativity was squeezed from any life remaining.
She loved the way swirls of cursive ink would decorate the white space
like paintings hanging in an art gallery. The danger was always in judging
the words, revising them multiple times till they were journal worthy
of belonging. What if this is not the final draft, she thought, 
the blank page an open door to something more.

I’m swaying with the music, singing periodically, in tune with the canvas and my own creative potential, as the mind bows to the heart and body below. Sea green and fuchsia swirls begin to intuitively fill a white background, cotton candy hearts reminding me of childhood. The gaps are filled in with lavender. A face begins to emerge, eyes closed in creative contemplation, a crimson lotus at the third eye.

Then the canvas is colored by more crimson lotuses and streaks of ochre, a crimson om to remind me of culture and duty. Something about this feels messy and heavy, yet necessary and meaningful. It feels like I am opening to the design of my life with more acceptance.

When we are asked to paint an image of Ma somewhere on the canvas, I am drawn to the white paint, and try to paint a profile of Her that is worthy, that captures my devotion and profound gratitude for Her unconditional love. Instead, what appears is a small face.

Feeling as if I’ve failed, the energy becomes frenetic trying to paint green leaves and a massive trunk over us both, as if an image of a tree can save the painting and still express my deep love for Her.

I don’t like the painting at all, and wonder about the process. Driving home from Sonoma after a long day, I’m too tired and careful not to juice the experience for significance to the point of dehydration.

The next morning in meditation, She appears as white paint, gentle brushstrokes covering any fixed ideas I have about myself or the painting. I’m struck by Her patience, Her kindness, Her forgiveness. Ideas and colors are born from a primordial white womb of not knowing. They capture expressions, experiences, and feelings at a certain point in time. Are they permanent?

Even these words are an attempt to capture an experience that cannot be reduced to a single cause or meaning. What if we are all in process, blank pages and white canvases with the chance to begin again and give ourselves to the possibility love, however it shows up?

When I hold fear hostage inside the house, trapped in thought bubbles expanding
to burst and tense muscles aching to move, it begs for mercy, for release
into a larger space that doesn’t judge it for being so restless. We go for a walk
in the neighborhood, less worried about being hit by a car or bicycle,
or an unstable telephone pole. The scent of lavender and rose and jasmine
bathe fear in the floral scent of late spring as birdsong and the tinkling
of wind chimes almost displace all worry. Almost. Anxiety is now garlanded
in the scents and sounds of a larger space that welcomes it
as if to say, may you be loved, may you be free.

​In my next encounter with you, you are a dancing skeleton dressed in a salmon and cobalt sari the color of a transitioning sky, with patches of black and white hair matted to your skull. There is a pink flower near your right temporal bone behind where your ear would have been, a blue nose ring suspended from the triangle where the cartilage of your nose once was.

Are you real?

Something about your presence echoes and mirrors the three characteristics of existence, that suffering is caused by clinging or resistance to change and taking it personally. It also has resonances with Jennifer Welwood’s poem “The Dakini Speaks”.

What if you are also not real?

Something about your theater, cartoon-like Dios De Los Muertos quality makes your presence soft and elastic. Your dancing brings a light touch of joy making suffering, impermanence, even death more bearable.

You are a partial answer to the question “Why do I feel like a part of my life force is being diminished by the death or the suffering of another?” You are also unfathomable, irreducible. I will never get to the bottom of you, because my ways of looking will change based on my participation with you over time.

Who am I in the twoness between us?

Am I real?

I literalize the personal idea of empath, the one who gets overwhelmed, the one whose body is breaking down, etc.

What if I am also not real?

You imbue me with a light touch of joy, your theater, cartoon like quality, making me dance, laugh, and not take myself so seriously. I am closer to an appreciative understanding of emptiness than ever before. Causes and conditions have molded me, and malleable perception can melt the mold.

What is the space between us? Is it real?

It’s easy to fill up the space with props, a blank page with ideas.

What if the space is also not real?

The props could be interchangeable, the ideas not static, but changing based on the need moment to moment.

Mostly what shows up in my day are a set of lackluster characters trapped
in the pages of black and white words the mind has already written about them,
books shelved and gathering dust. But look, how a poem by Maya Stein
can accompany one into meditative silence like a wave that clears
what’s carved in sand. In praise of on the inbreath, on incoming gifts
from the sea chronicling our brokenness and stubborn resilience.
I don’t know on the outbreath, like salt dissolving in trust and returning
to a great ocean of mystery to repeat the holy cycle again.

​There is an image of a magnolia tree. I can feel its trunk as my trunk, its branches as my limbs, its roots as my roots deeply connected to the earth.
 
I’m struck how it is committed to loving me, and letting itself be loved by me. I’m also struck by its commitment to blossoming for only a short time, regardless of weather or circumstance, its dedication to beauty and ethics. 
 
There is also something about a duty I have to rest, stay still, be open and sometimes dormant to nurture meaningful growth. 
 
This image is a gift, a grace I could not have imagined on my own. Is it real or not real? What I trust most is what blossoms in my heart, dies, blooms again, eternally repeating itself for a purpose it does not fully understand, but knows is unfathomably sacred. 
 
*****
 
Revisiting the image of the magnolia tree this morning, sensing it somatically and through the lens of the Brahmaviharas:
 
May I be so well.
May my suffering be soothed,
 
I realize how much I still live life in binaries, all or none thinking. Things are good if (fill in the blank), and bad when (fill in the blank).
 
May I meet this with a light touch,
Not pushing or pulling on anything.
 
The magnolia blossom imbues each circumstance (good, bad, and everything in between) with a light touch. It tries not to push or pull on things, because it understands causes and conditions needed to align in a special way for it to even be here.

Practicing with the Five S’s

Space/Splendor - Zoming out of the difficulty to notice space around it and anything pleasant to help balance the difficulty and not go into all-or-none, catastrophic thinking.

Sensations- Rather than trying to doctor the pain into a diagnosis (hard to abstain since it’s my profession), noting the sensations as ‘throbbing’ or ‘burning’ rather than ‘pain’.  It makes it less personal.

Self-compassion - Placing a hand on the hurt place and recognizing that others experience this, too. If I cannot feel the self-compassion, then inviting a figure of love to inspire it.

Not-self - Reflecting  on past inner and outer causes and conditions, present inner and outer causes and conditions contributing to the pain. Empty of a single cause or condition, and full of love.


There is a benevolence 
That softens a tangled mind
Agitated heart and tense body
Till they are all aligned 
To inhabit the moment 
With such intimacy and tenderness 
That a bright yellow center
Attracts bees to make honey
Make sweetness, make love
With all the hurt places-
Blood orange petals radiating
Metta in all directions
​Wishing for all to be free